


hollow men, stuffed men (leaning together)

by whiplash



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Depression, Friendship, Gen, Suicide attempt (canon), Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-04-27 13:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5051080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiplash/pseuds/whiplash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s no big fanfare to announce the realization. No bang to mark the event. But when Thomas lights his next cigarette, he does so filled with resolve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There’s a hollowness to him.

Always has been, he supposes. Yet another abnormality that he’s secretly born from birth. One which might just be even more perverse than his desire for the wrong gender. The hollowness greedily swallows all that’s bright and beautiful, and then spits nothing back. It’s turned him into a vessel that cannot be filled. Always needing more and always needing the wrong thing. 

And at times, when his thoughts spin in circles and his chest tightens with unhappiness, it aches. Physically aches, a dull but deep pain in his belly. These days the ache’s all but a constant presence. He digs his fist into it now, rubbing hard against the softness of his flesh. The pain’s cradled by his ribs, the misery nestling like an ugly growth amongst his organs. 

Thomas has seen men split open, with yards of glistening intestines pooled in their laps. He’s heard them scream, and he’s heard the same screams come to gurgling stops. He’s closed the staring eyes of dead men and seen for himself the tear tracks through the grime and the pain etched into their faces. Yet, sometimes, he imagines that if he could he would slice himself open and tear out all the faulty parts. Make himself into a new man. 

But, of course, he’s tried that already. He’s born the pain and the shame, and all for naught. 

Shuddering he tries to stand up straight. After just a few moments the band around his chest tightens and he’s forced to hunch over again. He inhales. Exhales. Inhales. And all along he tries to melt into the shadows, constantly listening for creaking doors or footsteps in the gravel. He cannot afford to be seen like this. Cannot afford to give them anything else to use against him. 

Eventually the moment passes and he lights a cigarette with shaky hands. Staring into the darkness he imagines the hollowness inside of him filling with smoke and smoldering ashes. 

xxx 

Baxter brings him tea. It’s kind of her and he should be grateful. He should be grateful for many things, but where there ought to be a well of gratitude he only ever finds a dank pool of apathy. But he still manages to dredge up a facsimile of a smile. He’s a terrible actor though, his hatred of the constant charades always shining through his stiff mask. 

“May I help you?” he asks after a few moments of silence. 

“I thought perhaps I could help you,” she answers. 

It feels like déjà vu. Perhaps it is. Perhaps his entire life is just a handful of scenes playing over and over again. Scenes with him in the background, carrying trays and refilling glasses or smoking resentfully while everyone else talks and laughs. And then scenes where he’s in focus: always hurting, always angry, always making a mess of things. Perhaps that’s all there’s to it. The story of his life, from beginning to end. 

“No,” he manages. “No, I don’t think so, Miss Baxter.” 

Then he leaves, his hand already clutching the cigarette case. 

xxx 

The tiny lick of fire startles him into awareness. He drops the match, watching it extinguish even before it hits the gravel by his feet. At some point the last lights must have gone out in the house. The moon and the stars make for poor substitutes and the world’s cast in darkness and shadows. Squinting down at the ground he finds it littered by cigarette stubs. He can’t remember smoking so many. Can barely remember leaving the servant’s hall. It had been… too loud. Everyone talking and laughing, once again, and him with no part to play in it. 

Everything stills. There’s no big fanfare to announce the realization. No bang to mark the event. 

But when Thomas lights his next cigarette, he does so filled with resolve. 

xxx 

“Another interview?” Carson asks with poorly hidden hope. 

Thomas nods, turning his head to catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He looks decent enough in his best suit and with his coat brushed and his shoes polished. His father’s watch ticks away in his pocket, the solid weight a comforting familiarity. 

He’s packed away the rest of his belongings into a suitcase, leaving the room tidy. While he’s burned his private correspondence – some almost kind letters penned to him by O’Brien during the war, a few short missives sent by Jimmy, a couple of carefully worded messages from an old lover – he just can’t bring himself to do the same with his small collection of private photos. 

Let them gawk, he thinks as the door closes behind him. Let them wonder. 

xxx 

On the train he watches the landscape flash past in the window. 

People scramble to get onboard, only to later scramble to get out again. Like actors in a play, they speak their lines and then exit the stage. Everyone's content to play their tiny part. Never questioning the need for it. Never realizing that it all amounted to nothing. 

But not him. Not Thomas Barrow. Not anymore.


	2. Chapter 2

Jimmy’s face is flushed pink with the warmth of the pub. His hair’s longer than Thomas remembers it. He’s out of livery, of course, and his jumper’s worn in the elbows. Other than that he’s just the same. A sullen angel with his wings clipped. For hours now Jimmy’s filled the space between them with stories of random girls and odd jobs. He’s petty and cruel, but Thomas still drinks in every word like it’s nectar. He smiles widely in all the right places and Jimmy, seemingly pleased to once again have a captive audience, smiles back. 

In the past Thomas used to trick himself into believing that the hollowness inside of him could be filled with someone like Jimmy, or even the Duke. Someone bright and beautiful, or just someone larger than life. Part of him still wants that to be true. But the time for dreaming’s over. All that’s left for him to do now is to accept that the void was never meant to be filled. 

More than anything Thomas wants to stay and talk all night. Perhaps even walk Jimmy home, then linger outside his building and watch the lights flicker to life in his room. Maybe get lucky enough to catch a glimpse of Jimmy’s silhouette in the window. It’s soppy and sad, of course, just like most of his life has been soppy and sad. 

“I should go,” he says, grateful when his voice comes out steady. He empties a handful of coins on the table, not bothering to count them. If there’s too much, well, then Jimmy’s sure to help himself to the extra shillings. 

“It was good to see you,” Jimmy says, “truly.” 

The lad looks surprised as he says it, so Thomas allows himself the luxury of imagining that the words might actually be true. He murmurs a few words of goodbye himself but keeps it short. A sudden urgency drives him forward. 

He has to go now. 

xxx 

Outside the air’s cold. 

Soon Thomas begins to shiver and once he starts he can’t stop. His teeth chatter and his hands tremble so badly that he can’t light his cigarette. It’s as if he’s been struck with palsy. Stumbling away towards a dark corner he finds a wall to lean against as his entire body shakes as if it’s about to come apart. After a while he becomes aware of a strange wheezing sound, like air being forced out through a leaky bellow. It’s not until the wheeze begins to stutter and catch that he realizes that it’s the sound of his own breathing. His lips feel thick and numb and his fingers deadly cold. His field of vision keeps narrowing. 

Then all of a sudden someone grabs his arm, causing him to startle badly. 

“I knew it,” Jimmy says, his voice sounding far away and awfully smug. Thomas opens his mouth to reply, only instead of words he spews out beer-mixed bile. He tumbles to his knees, just narrowly avoiding Jimmy’s shoes as his belly empties itself again. 

xxx 

Jimmy brews strong, thick tea. Without asking for Thomas’ preference, he stirs generous amounts of sugar into both cups. Stomping across the floor he then slams the cups down, causing tea to spill onto the saucers. It’s far from the grace he’d shown when serving food and drinks at Downton Abbey. Thomas would tell him as much, only his throat’s raw with stomach acid and tight with embarrassment. Keeping his mouth shut and his eyes down, he settles for playing with the fringe of the thick wool blanket that Jimmy had lobbed across the room at him. He's stopped shivering now and breathing no longer seems like such an Herculean task. Most of all he feels foolish. 

“Drink up,” his unwilling host orders, dropping down into the only other chair in the room. Sneaking a glance Thomas finds him looking grumpy, yet somehow as regal and commanding as a maharaja. The hollowness inside of him yearns and, in a desperate attempt to appease it, he takes a big gulp of tea only to choke on it. He spits and splutters, all too aware of Jimmy glaring at him across the table. 

“You’re hopeless,” he’s informed as soon as he stops coughing. 

“Yes,” Thomas agrees, attempting a smile. “Quite hopeless.” 

Jimmy looks away, his lips thinning. A muscle in his jaw jumps. For a strange moment Thomas is sure that he’s about to get punched in the mouth. He tucks his hands between his thighs, bracing himself for whatever’s about to happen. 

“You came here to say goodbye,” Jimmy eventually says, reaching for his tea. “You never said where you’re going though.” 

“You didn’t ask,” Thomas points out, buying himself some time. 

Jimmy slams the cup back down on the table. 

“Well, I’m asking _now_.”


	3. Chapter 3

He won't answer Jimmy’s questions. He _cant._

Jimmy storms around the room, causing Thomas to flinch at every sudden sound – a drawer slammed shut, boots taken off and hurled across the room, something heavy falling to the floor as Jimmy yanks the curtains shut – until eventually the storm dies down. 

“You’re going back to Downton,” Jimmy decides. 

Thomas just shakes his head, flicking a pillar of ash into his cold tea. He’s spent a lifetime at Downton Abbey, nothing more than a uniformed figure painted on the backdrop. And now… now he’s lost even that. He can’t go back. There’s no place for him there. Only he can’t explain that to Jimmy. Not without confirming what the other man must, somehow, already have guessed. Raising his eyes he finds Jimmy scowling down at him, his hair a rumpled halo and his face an angry, mottled red. It’s not fair that Thomas’ heart should swell with fondness at the sight, but it does. Oh, how it does. 

He should never have come here. He realizes that now. 

“I can’t,” he mutters, looking away again. The air’s so terribly thick with Jimmy’s disapproval that it’s become hard to fill his lungs. 

“ _Can’t_ ,” Jimmy repeats, as if he finds the very word offensive. “There’s an awful lot of that going around tonight, Mr. Barrow. But this time… this time you’re dead wrong.” 

xxx 

When the train thunders past them Jimmy’s hand snaps out to fasten around his wrist. The grip’s so tight that Thomas imagines his bones creaking and his skin bruising with the force. For a few moments Jimmy’s unspoken fear binds them together. Then he lets go. 

“I’m not going to throw myself in front of the train,” Thomas mutters, several moments too late. To make up for it he makes a show of rubbing at his wrist. 

“You better not,” Jimmy snaps back. “You owe me for the train ticket. You can pay me back next time we meet. All right?” 

“I’ll pay you back,” Thomas promises. It’s meant to be reassuring but Jimmy just frowns again. As if he’d hoped to hear another answer. He thinks perhaps that’s goodbye, but before he can turn towards the train, Jimmy speaks up again. 

“Whatever’s troubling you, Thomas, whatever it is that you won’t tell me, it’ll get better. Just give it some time.” 

Thomas wants to explain that he’s all out of time. That he’s already living on borrowed time. But the terrible anger has finally melted away from Jimmy, leaving him looking young and sounding earnest. 

“Thank you,” he says instead, straightening his shoulders and raising his head. Doing his damned best to look like a man and not just a wreck of one. “For your hospitality. You’re a good friend, Jimmy. ” 

And then he leaves. 

xxx 

Borrowed time. 

It’s all he can think of as he returns to the splendor of the upstairs world and takes his place at the dining table downstairs. Wanting to say goodbye to Jimmy, well, that was an honest mistake. Returning here though; that had been an act of cowardice. One which he’s now being punished for by the universe. 

The failed interviews, the doors closing in his face and the letters telling him that he’s not wanted. Carson’s drawled questions – _how is the job search going, Mr. Barrow?_ – and Lord Grantham’s disappointment each time he walks into a room only to find Thomas still in the house. Every back that turns as he enters the room, every conversation that quiets and ebbs into nothing, every laugh that seems to be at his expense… 

It’s the universe reminding him that he should already be dead. 

xxx 

The days blur together. He loses time. 

One moment he’s standing with his back straight and his face blank, the next he’s huddled outside in the cold with smoke clinging to the air around him. Meal after meal he spends in the servant’s hall – porridge with milk, potatoes and pork, steamed pudding studded with raisins – and it all tastes the same to him. There’s a seemingly endless row of long nights, spent alone in his attic room. 

Until, finally, he works up the courage to try again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Graphic description of a suicide attempt. Please don't read if you believe you would find it triggering.

This time around the only indulgence he allows himself is one last smoke.

He leans against the wall, tracing the rough stone behind him with his fingertips. Tipping his head backwards, he exhales a mouthful of smoke towards the sky. The sun’s rising from behind a familiar outline of trees. He imagines that it’s going to be a nice day. A bit cloudy perhaps, but little chance of rain. 

Dropping the cigarette Thomas then grinds the still smoking stub into the ground. Time to go. 

xxx 

There’s nothing easy about it. 

The first cut’s too shallow. The next so deep that the gush of blood takes him by surprise. The handle of the razor turns slippery and he all but loses it in the warm water. He’s distantly aware that it hurts and that he’s crying. That some weak, childish part of him – the part that had rejoiced at Jimmy’s bruising grip on the train station and had allowed that small kindness to anchor him to life for a few more miserable months – doesn’t want this. Well, too bad. 

Thomas cuts the other wrist open, then allows the razor to disappear into the bath. 

xxx 

The heart, he vaguely remembers, works like a pump. As it beats, sluggish and slow behind his ribs, it pushes blood through his body and out through the deep gashes on his arms. In a way, that’s the very thing that’s killing him. It seems only fitting, he thinks drowsily. He’s being killed his own stubborn, sacrilegious heart. 

At least he’s stopped crying now. The cuts sting, but it’s not half as bad as he’d imagined. The water’s turned luke-warm around him, but he imagines he’ll be gone before it gets too cold. His eyelids have begun to feel quite heavy. With a sigh, he allows them to fall shut. 

_There._ He’s done. Thomas Barrow's last scene. 

Exit right. 

xxx 

Then he wakes, dry and clothed in his bed. The cuts have been stitched close and his wrists wrapped in thick bandages. His room’s aired out and the curtains pulled wide open to let in the sun, as if to banish all remains of despair and darkness. Baxter’s sitting next to him. Her knitting’s cluttering up his bedside table and, even without asking, he just knows that she’s been watching over him for hours. She looks like she’s been crying and he imagines it’s for his damned soul. 

“Go away,” he rasps out, squeezing his eyes shut. 

He should have slit his throat instead.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was meant to be a one-shot reaction to how depressed Thomas has been so far in season six. So much for that...
> 
> EDIT: I guess my super-power is predicting fictional suicide attempts... ;-)


End file.
